Sarah Huckabee Sanders defended Donald Trump’s childish, sexist Twitter attacks on Mika Brzezinski and “Psycho” Joe Scarborough today by arguing that the most powerful man in the world feels “bullied” by their on-air criticisms of him.

In case you missed it, here’s what Huckabee Sanders thinks is presidential behavior.

Brzezinski and Scarborough are the hosts of MSNBC’s Morning Joe, which has been quite critical of Trump. It just so happens that Sean Hannity went after Scarborough last night. But as unhinged as Hannity was, he did not make it particularly personal and he said nothing about Brzezinski’s looks.

Assuming that Trump got riled up by Hannity, it speaks volumes that he focused on Brzezinski via a sexist attack and, reminiscent of one of his attacks on Megyn Kelly brought up bleeding.

In response, Huckabee Sanders came up with some Trump Twitter Trope on Fox News today. In essence, her argument was that Brzezinski and Scarborough have “bullied” Trump and, as a result, his smears were justified and a sign of his strength:

Because this exchange is so emblematic of Trump’s assault on the media: portraying them as dangerous and his own thin-skinned bullying as greatness, I am providing almost the complete transcript of Huckabee Sanders’ comments on the subject during her much longer interview with Fox’s Bill Hemmer today:

HUCKABEE SANDERS: I don’t think that the president’s ever been someone who gets attacked and doesn’t push back. There have been an outrageous number of personal attacks – not just at him but to, frankly, everyone around him. People on that show have personally attacked me many times. This is a president who fights fire with fire and certainly will not be allowed to be bullied by liberal media and the liberal elites within the media or Hollywood or anywhere else.

HEMMER: I get it but is that necessary?

HUCKABEE SANDERS: I think what’s necessary is to push back on unnecessary attacks on the president, both personally – I’ve seen far worse things come out of that show – again, directed not just at the president but everyone around him. Personal attacks, mean, hateful attacks. And, again, this president isn’t gonna sit back and not push back and he’s gonna fight fire with fire and I think that’s exactly what he did today.

HEMMER: I’ve heard that from you and I’ve heard that from him but it just seems like it is entirely more personal than needs to be and I’m wondering if you want to address that.

HUCKABEE SANDERS: I think I have addressed that as much as I can in terms of the president, again, isn’t gonna be somebody who’s bullied and allows people, himself and those around him to be personally attacked.

[…]

I mean, the outrageous attacks that take place on that show day in, day out – not just at the president and not against his policies, not against things that he’s pushing but they’re personal and they’re not just directed at him but at everyone around him. I’ve been called a lot of names on that show that don’t have anything to do with my beliefs or ideology or policy but they’re personal attacks.

The big problem with this argument is that while whining about Morning Joe’s personal attacks that are not about policy, Trump's tweet did the same thing. He did not mention a single thing either host said on the air (nor did Sanders) but merely whined that they speak “badly of me.”

Translation: Dear Leader Trump can’t tolerate being criticized.

If Hemmer noticed this underlying message, he did not mention it.

Watch Sanders defend the indefensible below, from the June 29, 2017 America’s Newsroom.

Showing 6 reactions

The outrageous hypocrisy of the Trumpsters is staggering. Are they truly not aware of the flack that was aimed at President Obama (starting with the birther focus aided and abetted by Donald J. Trump"). Bush was an adult in comparison. Regardless of what one could say about his being a tool for the likes of Cheney and Rumsfeld, he was too savvy to throw tantrums like this.

Trump being such a snowflake is an effective tool for the left to tweak him and create these unforced errors.

Part of the attraction of Der Furor’s tweets to his MAGA loser followers is him not being politically correct. But this sort of snowflake reaction isn’t that sort of red meat. Which is why Huckster is even struggling here in the Fox News bubble justifying his petty nastiness to a worried Bill Hemmer, certainly an Orange Hitler devotee.

We see some Republicans telling Hair Hitler to shut his Twitter pie hole. Fox News is getting nervous. So you know independents and Democrats are going to be disgusted with Trump’s latest temper tantrum.

I’ll have to watch “Morning Joe” tomorrow. They’re sure to have a lot of fun at Trump’s expense. Cue another Orange Orangutan Twitter outburst?

Doors is correct to note that this situation was almost certainly kicked off by Hannity’s attack on the MSNBC show last night. Trump regularly watches Hannity’s show and clearly picked up on the cue.

It’s frankly bizarre to watch Trump try to get away with saying that everyone else is bullying him when in fact his childish behavior for decades has been the very model of bullying. And it’s offensive for the Right Wing to try this kind of tactic. It’s bad enough that Trump’s behavior has emboldened hateful people across America (and the world), that we’ve had over 1000 hate actions inflicted by mean-spirited people who think they can get away with it while Pence runs the White House. But it really gets offensive to then hear the Right try to project their own viciousness onto the people who are trying to counter that hatred with reasoned thought.

And by the way, Hannity very much has been making it personal in his frantic attacks on Joe Scarborough. He spent his froth segment on Scarborough repeatedly calling him “Liberal Joe” – presumably this is Hannity’s way of jumping on the Trump/Limbaugh bullying insult train.